News: Asian School, Pantaloon tie up for training

(BS 20/07/2006) Kolkata - The city-based Asian School of Business Management (ASBM), a newly-established management institute, has entered into a tie up with the retail giant, Pantaloon Retail India Ltd (PRIL), for imparting advanced programme in retail management to the working executives and prospective employees of the latter.

"This is a unique arrangement made by Pantaloon with only four institutions in the country including ASBM," said Biswajeet Pattanayak, director, ASBM.

For the retail major, this initiative has just come in time as it is planning to invest Rs 500 crore in the eastern India over the next two years to create a total retail space of about 30 lakh square feet, sources said.

Under the MoU, Pantaloon and ASBM will jointly select the prospective employees of Pantaloon for their managerial cadre.

These prospective employees will be trained in retail management by ASBM for one and half year and in-company training at Pantaloon for six months. The programme is scheduled to start from September next.

Pattanayak said, the institute has plans to enter into more such industrial tie-ups to run job guaranteed corporate training programmes at its new Centre for Corporate Studies.

Meanwhile, ASBM, which is starting its academic programmes from this academic year, has signed another MoU with Andhra Bank for extending educational loan facilities to its students at four per cent less than the prevalent market rate.

Under the MoU, Andhra Bank will now provide financial resource for management education to all the students of ASBM from different parts of the country with the lowest interest rate in the market in single window scheme from the Bank's Chandrasekharpur Branch, here. Girl students will get loans at 0.5 per cent less than the boys.

The prevalent market rate of interest for education loan is just about 13 per cent.

With this MoU, Pattanayak said, ASBM has joined the league of national level institutes like Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, XLRI, Jamshedpur, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, BITS, Messra, BITS, Pilani, BITS, Goa, Goa Institute of Management and K J Somaiya Institute of Management with whom Andhra Bank has also made this tie-up.

"The other institutes with whom Andhra Bank has done this national tie-up are prestigious and with long history of excellence. This is the first occasion, the Andhra Bank has considered a new institute like ASBM for such tie-up in recognition of our quality and excellence from the very beginning", he claimed.